Gangster Squad‘s likely contribution to film history will be to further the ongoing debate over film or digital as the preferred medium for movies. Director Ruben Fleischer, who to this point has contented himself with comedy, wants his dramatic debut…

The calendar reads mid-January and I haven’t written a review since my shattering disappointment in Skyfall back in November. I could list a variety of excuses for this but that wouldn’t preclude them from being just that. I will say…

It’s disheartening to know within the first five minutes of a movie that it’s going to be a mundane experience. The opening sequence of a James Bond flick is often a good indicator of how the rest of the film…

Despite the hyperbolical entreaties from some, failure to see Cloud Atlas will not hasten the inevitable decay and demise of cinema. While the latest film from The Matrix directors the Wachowskis and Run Lola Run director Tom Twyker is ambitious,…

Yet another All Hallow’s Eve has come and gone. I hope you enjoyed this year’s run of diabolical dread and devilish distress. This year we revisited some old favorites, conjured up some new scares, and assailed our ears with terrifying…

I find it difficult not to give the number one spot over to that classic slasher film that birthed the infamous killer known as Michael Myers, and tonight is no exception. The rightly-celebrated Halloween theme is as iconic as Bernard Hermann’s Psycho or John Williams’s Jaws. If Alfred Hitchcock can credit Hermann for 33% of the frightening effect of Psycho, Carpenter can credit himself for saving his movie with a terrifying score. Even divorced from the film, those quick, high piano notes overlayed with long, low tones (and that ever present staccato chirp underscoring the whole thing), instill a feeling of dread and foreboding.